Abilene is a red town in a vastly red region. So this is ... interesting. (Gift link.) www.kansascity.com/news/politic...

Tim Walz: "My god, we've got the White House threatening investigations and jail time because an escalator stopped? Walk up the damn stairs!"

ICE is planning a dramatic expansion in Milwaukee, a downtown office to go with its new northwest side field facility. (Members-only at @urbanmilwaukee.com ). urbanmilwaukee.com/2025/10/02/i...

Also on this point, I was on a neighborhood tour recently when someone asked if they should keep calling 911 for issues. Someone else sarcastically said “yeah, call and wait 30 minutes.” How much of KC’s crime rate is due to long 911 wait times?

Since “How do we win back young men” has been such a hot topic of discussion in left-of-center circles, may I propose a platform of: “Going after all the scam artists that prey on them that the GOP have aligned themselves with”

It’s weird to me that Republicans complain about crime in Kansas City as if a Republican commission doesn’t control the police department. www.kansascity.com/news/politic...

A new poll from the Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance found that voters in four counties across the metro would support a regional sales tax dedicated to bus service, even as soon as next year. www.kcur.org/housing-deve...

Jackson Co residents voted to recall County Exec Frank White Jr. and remove him from office effective immediately. The decision held 85% of the vote. The election itself had a low turnout. Fewer than 11% of registered voters in Kansas City & 20% in Eastern Jackson County www.kcur.org/politics-ele...

With late week’s JoCo Tesla and this SUV, this is rapidly becoming the most popular fake parking spot in the Crossroads. Also pretty sure this Mercedes is parked illegally.

More authoritarianism. The DOJ is now Trump’s personal hit squad.

The directive goes as far as to list charges prosecutors could file, ranging from arson to material support of terrorism. The memo suggests department leaders are following orders from the president that specific people or groups be subject to criminal investigation www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/u...

Yet another clear threat of violence on Fox that actually would normally get someone fired instantly. And put on a watch list.

This indiscriminate mass detention — a dramatic shift in immigration enforcement policy that began on July 8 — has been declared illegal by dozens of federal judges, who have described it as a flagrant perversion of long-standing law, policy and common sense. www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

A new incentive framework will help developers advance a long-planned remake of Kansas City's historic Parade Park Homes community. www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/n...

The lock handle on the RideKC Bike I had this morning is a Lego brick 🧱

POV, whatever comes next is going to be Not Great

“In 2004, #London reversed its parking requirements, eliminating the previous minimums and putting new maximums on parking supply for all developments in the metropolitan area.” – Zhan Guo #ParkingAndTheCity, Chapter 16 books.apple.com/us/book/park...

London would like to remind American visitors that hospitals do not have to be built as hilltop fortresses, buttressed by parking and difficult to reach on foot, bike, or by transit. You can put them right in the city actually.

The latest attack on multimodal transportation is more brazen and destructive than ever before — and the Trump administration is no longer hiding its disdain for walking and biking projects. usa.streetsblog.org/2025/09/22/h...

Trump is rescinding road safety grants all over the country, in blue states and red ones. The reason: those projects are "hostile" to cars. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

From Disney’s capitulation on Jimmy Kimmel to tech moguls’ White House dinner, corporate élites are choosing self-preservation over principle. www.newyorker.com/news/the-fin...

As Trump doubles down on fossil fuels, the U.S. and China are offering competing visions for the future of energy, representing the next dimension in the showdown between two superpowers vying for global influence and artificial intelligence supremacy www.wsj.com/economy/glob...

Humphrey Bogart, burlesque & a resident ghost: The history of KC’s oldest theater www.kansascity.com/entertainmen...

If Kansas City ever had any real traffic jams, people would be a lot more keen to fund the bus. Driving in downtown Kansas City is a nightmare right now. That’s great | Opinion www.kansascity.com/opinion/edit...

Truly horrifying. It keeps getting darker here www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

ILLINOIS — Trump’s Gestapo violently throws female congressional candidate @KatAbughazaleh to the ground to the ground

"Because someone died, we have to take away your rights" -- the same pretextual rationale that authoritarians always use

In a ruling dripping with derision, a federal judge has rejected President Trump’s defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, asserting that the rambling 85-page suit did not follow federal rules for filing civil complaints. www.cnn.com/2025/09/19/m...

Once more, SNAP data requests from the federal government are in the news. Kansas AG Kris Kobach sued the governor and head of DCF to demand the release of data. Their court filings got heated and a judge will decide soon if the case should be dismissed. kansasreflector.com/2025/09/19/s...

we wrote about this WH tactic recently. they’re asking journalists for expert source names and then using them to look up political donations in FEC records to try to discredit those sources as biased. www.npr.org/2025/08/18/n...

The U.S. ambassador to Canada is expressing frustration over the anti-American sentiment he sees in this country, including from politicians, after U.S. President Donald Trump hit most of the world with tariffs. www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

This is what happens in an oligarchy where a few control the platforms of communication and the media.

It would have been appropriate for him to apologize to his viewers & correct the record, given the breadth of his platform on network television. Instead, he was silenced by a government & its allies that want to control what you say, what you do & what you think. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

BREAKING: Judge orders Columbia activist Mahmoud Khalil to be deported to Algeria or Syria, alleging he omitted information from his green card application.

I agree that more should be done to support local news. But based on my experience as a government reporter I would say cities aren’t the answer. Again based on my previous experience, local governments are often disinterested in the type journalism comminties most need: accountability

Some military lawyers and other Defense Department officials are raising concerns about the legal implications of President Trump’s expanding military campaign against Latin American-based drug cartels www.wsj.com/politics/nat...

“It’s very OK” - anonymous on St. Louis as a city.

What was the problem with Sesame Street again

A new Midtown apartment project could soon move forward after the developer and nearby neighbors struck a compromise that will make the building less dense. www.kansascity.com/news/local/a...

What’s Sinclair Media? Take a tour through our archives www.motherjones.com/politics/201...

The US justice department has scrubbed a study from its website concluding that far-right extremists have killed far more Americans than any other domestic terrorist group, just days after a gunman fatally shot the prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

A complete collapse of political norms around virtue and ethics since 2016. This celebration of cruelty and violence, and the encouragement of the public to take joy in violence against others, is very unhealthy for society.

Transit-oriented developments across North America continue to be designed with cars in mind, dooming our transit systems. nextcity.org/urbanist-new...

JUST IN: The Federal reserve lowered interest rates by a quarter percentage point Wednesday in an effort to cushion the sagging job market. The move comes as Fed policymakers face growing pressure from President Trump.

Weird how Trump didn’t remember Melissa Hortman and Patel doesn’t know who Dylan Roof is

“This doesn’t happen very often.. And the reason it doesn’t is because usually states don’t pass their map in a week and a half’s time — they have some amount of, you know, public viewing of it, vetting, to make sure errors like this don’t happen.” www.kcur.org/politics-ele...

A monthslong standoff between Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly and the Trump administration has escalated into a court battle over whether the federal government has a right to the personal information of low-income Kansans whose families rely on food assistance. www.kansascity.com/news/politic...

Attorney General Pam Bondi provoked a broad backlash this week after announcing she would “absolutely target” protesters engaging in “hate speech” — and claiming she had authority to investigate businesses that refused to print memorial vigil posters for Charlie Kirk. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/u...

Casar: "Instead of actually trying to quell political violence, you see Donald Trump sending out Bondi and Vance to start going after magazines, independent press, independent foundations ... they're trying to weaponize this crisis in order to crush free speech."